First published 2025
Anna graduates from Harvard in 1996 when she meets Christoph, a German exchange student whose intelligence and beauty captivate her completely. She follows him across the Atlantic to Germany, where picturesque towns mask the country's wartime past. Christoph speaks against Nazi crimes but stays silent about his grandfather's role in the war. Anna carries her own family history through photos her American GI grandfather took during liberation, images preserved in a scrapbook only she has discovered. As Anna travels between America and Germany to pursue this complicated romance, the story shifts to both grandfathers during the war itself. Her grandfather documents Holocaust survivors after liberation and participates in capturing Hitler's mountain retreat. His grandfather fights for the Wehrmacht. These parallel wartime experiences create fractures that reach into the present, threatening to destroy Anna's relationship with Christoph. The weight of family memory and historical guilt tests whether love can survive the sins of previous generations.
Genres: romance, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: America, Germany, Harvard
Period: 1996, World War II
256 pages · Hardcover · Jonathan Cape
Content warnings: war